Glad Spirits
by icepixel
Summary: Meg Thatcher meets her father-in-law for the first time. Fraser/Thatcher.


Two weeks after the wedding, on their first day back at work, Meg looked up from her 8924F report to find a strange man in a dress uniform and beaver hat standing in her office. Funny, she hadn't heard the door open. Still, no point in being rude, especially not to a fellow Mountie. "Can I help you, Sergeant...?"

"Fraser," the man said.

Her eyebrows rose. "As in...?"

"I wanted to welcome you to the family," he said. "I've been watching you and Benton since...well, ever since you arrived in Chicago, but this is the first time I've been able to make contact. It must have something to do with the marriage ceremony, though I'm not sure why that should have any bearing on these matters."

Meg blinked rapidly a few times in succession. Standing, she held up a finger. "Would you excuse me for just one moment?" she asked, stepping out from behind her desk. She walked to the door, opened it, and peered out into the hallway. Near the front of the office, Ben Fraser—her husband—was showing Turnbull how to do something on the computer.

"Fraser," she called.

He looked at her, a smile she'd come to know well over the past several months lighting his face for the briefest of seconds before he schooled it away under a professional mask. "Inspector?"

"I need to see you in my office. Now."

He left Turnbull with stern instructions to _not touch anything_ until he returned and joined her in her office. She watched him stop short upon seeing the strange man standing next to her desk. "Ben," she said, "correct me if I'm wrong, but...your father died four years ago, didn't he?"

"Ah, yes, he did," he replied.

Meg nodded toward the putative Bob Fraser. "Well, he seems to be standing in my office. Looking rather lively, I might add."

"I'm standing right here, you know," Bob said, just as his son blurted, "You can see him?"

She wasn't quite sure what she'd expected Ben's response to be, but it wasn't that. "You mean this has been going on for a while?" Come to think of it, that _would_ explain a few things.

"Entirely too long a while," Ben muttered in an exasperated tone she'd never heard him use before. "Dad, what are you doing here?"

Bob bristled. "A man can't say hello to his new daughter-in-law?"

"Considering that that man is dead..."

Glad her diplomatic training had been good for something, Meg inserted herself into the brewing argument. "It's nice to meet you, Sergeant," she said. "Even under the...unusual circumstances."

Bob waved his hand. "No need for this 'Sergeant' nonsense. Call me Dad."

She smiled weakly. _That_ would take some getting used to.

"Speaking of which," Bob continued, "now that you've had time to settle into married life, when can I expect a grandchild?"

"Dad!" Ben hissed as Meg attempted not to gape. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

"I can't say as I...oh. I see." She couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw the hint of a blush color the older man's cheeks. "Well, if your mother and I had worked with each other, I can't say as we wouldn't have done the same thing."

She felt her jaw drop. Ben turned an intriguing shade of tomato. "Dad," he said. "Leave. Now. _Please._"

Bob threw up his hands. "All right! I'm going. You don't have to be rude about it." He shook his head and glanced at Meg. "It was good to finally talk to you, dear. I hoped for a long time that the two of you would work things out."

"That's"—_creepy_, her brain supplied—"I...ah, thank you," she finally managed.

Bob nodded at both of them and, somewhere in the blink of her eye, disappeared from the room.

Ben put a hand on her arm. She turned, finding him looking sheepish. "I was going to tell you about him. I just...hadn't figured out a good way," he said.

She caught his other hand in hers and curled her fingers around his palm. "It's all right. I doubt I would have believed you any other way."

He squeezed her hand. "And you...don't mind?"

The equanimity she'd taken Bob Fraser's presence with should probably worry her, but then again, there were a lot of things about life with Benton Fraser that should probably worry her, so on the whole, she found it easier to pretend that his existence was a perfectly normal occurrence. She shook her head. "Is he always like that?" she asked.

Ben winced. "The topic of grandchildren has come up before," he admitted.

Raising an eyebrow, she took a step closer to her husband, brushing her fingers along the buttons of his tunic. "Well," she said philosophically, "I suppose it's not anything we haven't been talking about ourselves." She glanced at the clock on the wall. "Ten-thirty is a perfectly reasonable time to leave for lunch, isn't it?"

"Among the Inuit, meal times—"

She kissed him until he forgot all about the Inuit.


End file.
